Category: Product Management

I hate breaking apps, especially when I know they are being used in the field. A crash in the field can mean significant lost time and data. Not good! That said, as platforms continually change under the application (and their languages mature) even rebuilding an app (with no changes from me) can break it. I don’t release often enough because of the fear of breaking a production app. Beta testers help reduce that stress, and allow me to make progress. Please participate in beta testing, when you can afford:

That said, Notes Collector was developed based on Timestamped Field Notes in order to migrate to more flexible internal infrastructure, to allow some experimentation on new features (without destabilizing TFN), and to more easily support more platforms (iOS, Android and Web.)

Here are some suggestions/requests I’ve heard from you over the years:

Allow an optional photograph to be added to a note item.

Allow an optional location (latitude / longitude) to be added to a note item.

The current Neukadye field applications do not fully synchronize the user’s data, they effectively “offload it”, backing it up to the cloud for safe keeping and future processing.

The assumption (way back when these apps were first designed) was you’d want to collect the data in the field, but then copy it off the device onto a “real computer” as quickly as possible. A lot has changed since then. Networks are better and more prevalent (even in the field), mobile devices are more like real computers, and some people only have mobile devices.

Notes Collector is a new app designed with these things in mind. It is a similar application (similar to Timestamped Field Notes) however it synchronizes its data between your devices (and the cloud) in all directions in realtime (when online.)

If you collect on your phone or tablet it’ll be available on all your devices, and available to computers via the cloud. You could even record notes from multiple devices at the same time, into the same event.

Some benefits of the new approach:

Start a set of notes on any device, and pick them up (or continue them) on any other.

Have your notes saved to the cloud in realtime, when online. (The application still works offline. Offline notes synchronize automatically when network connectivity is reestablished.)

Keyword Set and Keyword updates are automatically shared between devices.

I would welcome beta testers for the iOS version of Notes Collector. Please contact me if interested.

I’ve received some interest in “interval timers” for Timestamped Field Notes, i.e. regular audible blips, notifications and/or automatic text inserts that occur at time intervals during the event data entry. The purpose is to segment the data, or initiate regular action from the user.

This feature would help support behavioral sampling (e.g. scan sampling, instantaneous sampling) but maybe also other purposes for your need.

If interested in helping specify this feature, please comment here, or send your thoughts to info@neukadye.com or answer these quick questions: